Wild Cherry

Appears in

By Roger Phillips

Published 1986

  • About

Prunus avium A deciduous tree, rather common in England, Wales and Ireland but becoming rare in northern Scotland, it is found in woods and hedges. It flowers in late April or May and the fruit ripens in early July. It can be substituted for cultivated cherries in any recipe but the amount of sugar must be adjusted to compensate, as the wild crop is normally very sour.

The cherry is quite common in folklore. It is strangely mixed up with the cuckoo, probably due to the tradition that the cuckoo must eat three goods meals of cherries before he is allowed to stop singing. Buckinghamshire children would recite the following rhyme while shaking a blossoming cherry tree: